Photographs Faded with Time
by Miss Puppylove
Summary: A very long one-shot, concerning Sirius, Remus, twelve missing years, a good deal of lost chances, and trying to grow up. (Dark, slashy)


Notes: This is far longer than it has any right to be. It also happens to be the sequel to Snapshots of the Moon, though if you haven't read that, please don't turn back now! This can be read quite well enough on its own. However, if you'd rather read the prequel and then this, be my guest. Aside from that, a few warnings; the first is that this fic is fairly dark, so before you read it, it may be a good idea to be in the sort of mood in which you like/don't mind reading darkish things. Secondly, this contains mild spoilers for all five Harry Potter books, so if you've spent the last year living under a rock and haven't read Order of the Phoenix, you may not want to read this. Third, as always on this account, if you don't like slash, or simply don't like Sirius and Remus in love with each other, feel free to turn back. The rest of you, enjoy. 

Disclaimer: the Harry Potter books and all related things that I repeatedly refer to in this fic belong to JK Rowling, because she is the genius that made all this stuff up, and I would never say otherwise. 

Photographs Faded with Time

Sirius Black is nineteen years old. 

"I cannot _believe_ it!" he says, for what he vaguely suspects may be the fifth time. "I can't believe it, James."

"Yeah," James Potter says, somewhat dazedly. "You've said."

Sirius cheerfully toasts him with a glass of champagne, which he suspects is his third; but now isn't the time to worry about things like that. "Anyway," he persists, "really I never thought you had it in you. Was impressed you ever got her to go out with you in the first place. Remind me, how did you manage it?"

James rolls his eyes, taking his friend's elbow and dragging Sirius back to the refreshment table. "Sit down, Sirius, before you fall over or do something stupid. I told you, one day – Lily tells it this way, at least – she got tired of me always asking, so she said yes. One date to get me off her back, or something like that." He grins roguishly. "Obviously, it didn't work out quite that way."

"Obviously," Sirius echoes, gazing out across the lawn. The wedding reception is now in full swing; a few minutes ago, Mr. Potter and Lily had been dancing, but Sirius spots Mr. Potter deep in conversation with Mad Eye Moody, who keeps glancing around warily, as though expecting a sudden horrible explosion to go off at any moment. 

Lily, Sirius sees, resplendent in pale green wedding robes, is over by the white pavilion Dumbledore has erected on the Hogwarts lawn for this occasion. The recent Mrs. Potter seems to be enjoying herself immensely; she is introducing some old school friends to her parents, and if Sirius tilts his head a bit, he can just spot Lily's sister, sitting stiffly and looking very disapproving of the whole affair. Sirius wonders briefly how much effort it took to arrange things so that Lily's Muggle relatives could come to Hogwarts, let alone see it; he rather thinks it is a pity, as Petunia Evans evidently isn't enjoying a bit of it.

He turns to tell James this, but James is standing suddenly, looking a great deal like a startled deer. "_Bugger_," James mutters with feeling.

"What?" Sirius asks, but sees the problem immediately; further down the table, Peter seems to have had a bit too much to drink, and is absently tripping over chairs. "Oh," Sirius adds, and hides a grin as James rushes off to deal with their hapless friend.

"Oh _dear_," says a mildly concerned voice behind Sirius, accompanied by a warm hand on Sirius's shoulder. 

Sirius looks up and blinks happily at the upside-down face of Remus Lupin. "Hullo, Moony."

Remus grins, and sits down in a chair next to Sirius's. Sirius sits up more neatly, and looks at Remus, who is properly right side up again now that he is not standing directly over Sirius. "Enjoying yourself?" Sirius asks.

"Rather." Remus's gaze drifts off across the lawn. "It's wonderful, to see so many happy people in one place."

"Yeah," Sirius agrees, and glances around a bit more. "Is your dad here?"

"Somewhere." A smile slips across his face. "He wouldn't miss it for the world, of course. He's very proud of James."

"As are we all," Sirius murmurs. Remus gives him a vaguely surprised look, and Sirius shrugs. "I'm allowed my share of maudlin moments, right?"

"Now really," Remus says in a disapproving voice, though he is still smiling, "weddings aren't _maudlin_, Padfoot. If they were, no one cynical would ever marry, and Lily tells me on good authority that her charming sister over there is engaged to a man by the name of Vernon Dursley."

Sirius looks again, doubtfully, in the direction of Lily's taller, blonde, and decidedly unattractive sister. "Shame, really," he says. "Just imagine the hell they could have given Prongs if they'd been on good terms."

"Perish the thought," Remus says dryly. He straightens. "Ah! James seems to have got Peter sorted out; I'll finally be able to carry out my plot."

"Plot?" Sirius asks, but Remus has sprung up from his chair with a spontaneous high energy that still manages to surprise Sirius. He shakes his head ruefully, and watches as Remus weaves his way through tipsy guests and laughing dancers and talking parents. He watches as Remus effortlessly joins the conversation Lily is engaged in, asks her to come with him in obvious politeness, though Sirius is too far away to catch the words, and Remus leaves with Lily, parting with the boy and his redhead girlfriend, who don't look particularly put off by the intrusion, but rather, quite happy to have exchanged words with Remus. Sirius watches as Remus easily makes his way back towards the refreshment table, Lily in tow, and manages to snag James on the way with a minimum of fuss.

Sirius notices that he seems to be grinning a grin of goofy admiration, and carefully schools his features into those of wary amusement as Remus finally returns with the bride and groom.

"Plot?" Sirius says again.

"Indeed," Remus says, producing a camera with a flourish. "Surely you don't think I can come to a wedding and let everyone get away without having their pictures taken first. Obviously we need one of the happy couple and the best man, so Sirius, do stand up and look happy for them."

"Yessir," Sirius grins, and stands, slinging an arm around James.

"I don't think so," Lily interjects, taking the hand that is hanging off James's shoulder and throwing it back in the general direction of its owner. "_I'm_ the one marrying James, therefore _I_ get to have my hands on him. Not you."

"Yessir," Sirius says again, before he can stop himself, and braces himself for the inevitable outburst, but it doesn't come. He blinks. Living with James, evidently, has certainly raised Lily's tolerance for fools.

Remus's mouth quirks wryly, for perhaps he is thinking along the same lines as Sirius, and he says, "That looks good. Right, just smile and look as happy as you are …" James and Lily beam, arms wrapped tightly around each other. Remus pauses. "Sirius, put down that champagne glass."

But Sirius only laughs and toasts Remus as the camera flashes.

* * *

Remus Lupin is twenty years old.

He's beginning to get a headache.

"Stop yelling, please," he says in a very reasonable voice.

"Stop yelling!" Sirius repeats incredulously, his voice rising. "I'm not yelling. I'm trying to tell you, and you're just standing there, looking so – so bloody _reasonable_ about everything."

Remus takes a deep breath. "Should you like me to be less reasonable?"

"Yes! No! I don't _know_, okay?" Sirius paces the room like something caged, expertly dodging the books that are spilled and piled around the flat, exactly the way Remus likes them, and exactly the way they wouldn't be if Sirius ever got around to caring about cleaning up.

Remus sits on the couch, and watches Sirius impassively.

Sirius clenches his fists. "It just seemed much _simpler_ two years ago. Join the order, fight the snake-y bastard, keep the Muggles and Muggle-borns safe, that sort of thing. None of this _secret Order mission_ stuff. Voldemort's really bloody good at getting people divided, if even the Order –" He breaks off, swallows. "Why would Dumbledore say something like that?"

"Dumbledore has our best interests in mind," Remus says, relieved to finally get a word in edgewise. "I'd tell you if I could, and you know it."

Now Sirius turns, stops pacing, stands facing Remus like a coiled spring. "No. You _can_ tell me. But you _won't_."

"I _want to_," Remus says fiercely, standing. "But if I start disobeying Dumbledore's orders now, what's to keep me from doing it again, and again? I've betrayed Dumbledore enough –"

"Hell, Remus," Sirius interrupts angrily. "I can't believe you're still feeling guilty. So we had a few close calls. So what? You said yourself, for the first time, your transformation was _fun_. You appreciated us being Animagi. You liked leaving the Shack, and going in the Forest, and to Hogsmeade … Admit it, you even liked the close calls, as much as James and I did."

"Stop it," Remus says, steel in his voice.

"No," Sirius says, and his eyes are overbright. "We were helping you, and you _still_ think we were being stupid kids. You're just using it as an excuse for not telling me what you're doing these days, why you're always gone on your bloody Order missions, why you never have _time_ …" His voice has risen almost to a whine. He swallows hard. "What next, Remus? What next? Am I going to be able to trust _anything_?"

Remus feels suddenly helpless. There are three terrible words hanging between them, that neither dare say, _someone's a traitor_, because now everyone in the Order knows that somehow things are leaking outside, and this is why Dumbledore has decreed what he has, why he has instructed Remus to tell no one of the work Remus is doing for the Order.

"I still trust," he says, very quietly.

"Do you?" Sirius's voice is hoarse.

Impulsively Remus grabs Sirius's hands, holds them tightly enough that Sirius winces slightly. "_Yes_," Remus says, eyes locking with Sirius, not allowing either of them to look away. "We both know neither of us would ever work for Voldemort. We _know_. I haven't got a reason not to trust." He pauses. They are still staring at each other, and Remus can feel a crackling intensity in the room that scares him. "Have you a reason?"

Sirius looks down, swallows. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I … you know I do things. Speak without thinking. I shouldn't." The words are coming haltingly, as though he doesn't know what to say, and despite that is doing his best to think them through before saying them. "I just … I miss you, Remus. You're never around, and you've got far more Order work than I do, and I _worry_ –" He breaks off, looks up again.

Remus realizes that he is still holding Sirius's hands, though not so tightly. He lets them go slowly, his knuckles cracking slightly from the relieved pressure.

"I know," he says. "I worry too."

Sirius ducks forward, arms suddenly wrapped around Remus, and he is shaking slightly with that fierce energy Remus has always known him to possess, and something else Remus has only noticed more recently; strange flickers of desperation in Sirius's eyes, brief moments of remembered childhood when the whole weight of terrifying reality comes crashing down on him. This, now, their whole half-shouted urgent argument, is born of one of these moments, so Remus holds him, and waits for the shaking to pass, and wonders. How long, _how long_, must this war go on? He trusts they will not go mad from it, they cannot do that, but how much longer will it be before Sirius's hands always shake when he is drinking the tea Remus has brewed, how much longer it will be before Remus will begin to suspect he has imagined the rakish wicked grin he knows so well from Sirius's face, from their final years at Hogwarts?

But this is only a flicker, only a momentary lapse in the way things are. Life has never been perfect, but Remus knows there will always be, solidly, Sirius in the middle of his life, exactly where he belongs. So Remus holds Sirius until this passes, and says that most sacred of things, which either of them has said only a handful of times, for fear that the ringing truth of the words might be diminished if overused. 

"I love you," he whispers.

But somewhere, somewhere, a terrifying little treacherous part of him, it wonders, is that enough?

* * *

Remus Lupin is twenty-one years old.

He is crying, desperate gulping sobs, as he has never cried before in his life. Not even when he was six years old, with a bitten arm and his parents exchanging looks of pitying despair over his head, did he cry like this. Not even when he was ten years old, the day he awoke and his mother did not, did he cry like this.

He is vaguely aware that he seems to be clutching the round kitchen table, so much smaller and more worn than he remembers it from childhood, and that from across the table, his father is drinking a cup of tea and waiting for him to calm down.

Eventually, he will calm down. He can. But just now, just now, as Sirius had once said accusingly, he _won't_.

"Remus," Augustus Lupin says softly.

And now it seems he will, will calm down, because his father has been waiting patiently, and sounds so soothing and calm, and Remus knows that the things that have happened have hurt Augustus too, if not so deeply.

He looks up slowly, his breath trying to remember normalcy and tears still sliding down his face like forgotten poetry.

"Here," Augustus says, and slides a cup of tea across the little round table.  Remus swipes the sleeve of his robe across his face, a helpless childhood gesture, and takes the tea. He drinks it automatically, and feels very, very slightly better.

"Thank you."

His father smiles, so very slightly, compassion and sadness to go with Remus's tea. "You're welcome."

They sit in silence.

Remus sets down his empty teacup in its saucer. There is a faint clink, and his hand jerks away from the cup. He bites his lip, trying to look anywhere but reality.

"He walked out," Remus says finally. "He was always asking me about the Order, and he became so upset when I didn't tell him. He walked out."

Augustus is silent. Remus has never elaborated, never quite told his father the extent of his relationship with Sirius; it is simply understood. Augustus knows what he is saying, here, now. When he says that, one day, Sirius simply gave up and walked out, both Remus and his father know exactly what that means.

"And the next day I got the paper," Remus adds. "Voldemort's defeat."

The _Daily Prophet_ is sitting on the Lupins' kitchen counter, like an accusation. Neither of them looks at it; they can both remember the front page, the thousands of jubilant black-and-white people, laughing, drinking, throwing confetti in their neat little photographs. But that particular paper is buried, November 2nd's edition lies on top, sensational headline sprawled across, **Mass Carnage in London**, photograph spilled across the page, open sewer and shocked Muggles and no laughing madman. As though the paper is only fiction, and this is just a bad dream.

"They say he laughed," Remus says now, though he does not look at the paper.

"Do you believe it?" Augustus asks softly, and the question is not about a moment of mirthless hysterical laughter, it is about Sirius, _anything_ about Sirius.

Remus runs a hand through his hair, such a helpless commonplace gesture that he wants to cry again. "I have no idea." He idly traces a whorl of wood in the grain of the table. "It would have been so much easier … I keep expecting him to come back, and say he didn't mean it, it's enough now, to be with me, if James and Lily must be gone … I keep forgetting what really happened. Why he really walked out."

"Why?"

He looks up, sharply, at Augustus. "To sell them to Voldemort, of course."

"Of course," his father murmurs.

The house is suddenly too small, far too small to be sitting across the table from his father, who has suddenly and inexplicably stopped making sense. Remus moves to get up, stops halfway. Gets up completely, and sets his teacup in the sink, and looks out the window at the road on the moor, the village that is stealthily creeping its way up the road, until it engulfs the little Lupin cottage, transforms it into just another nameless house in a little Scottish town.

"You loved him," Remus's father comments softly.

Remus freezes. Little Scottish town, his mind echoes, a desperate attempt to think of nothing in particular and never anything important.

"Yes," he says, the next line in a perfectly rational conversation.

A chair creaks, and a moment later Remus can feel an emptiness in the room. Without looking, he knows his father has left him, here at the kitchen window, to sort his thoughts. "Yes," he whispers again to the windowpane.

It isn't right anymore, this love, not the way it used to be, snug and warm in his heart and belly, exactly _right_, there against his skin. It is still there, like the warmth at the edge of a dream or a promise made in another life, and it isn't enough, it _isn't_.

And nevertheless, he still loves.

* * *

Sirius Black is twenty-two years old.

He is quite sure of this, because _there_, on the wall, march little lines of whitish gray, carved in the stone, ten little groups of tally-marks, sixty scratches, deep and furious, that is 1981. And there, next to it, a jumble of lines, going down the stone, a place for January and February and March, on and on, a differentiation of the seasons in this place where it is always frost-winter cold. And now it is just past his birthday, a little over twenty-two years since he was born into a family who cared little and loved less. He wonders idly if his parents are still alive, if his mother has finished the descent into oblivion started by Regulus's death, if his father's years have failed him.

Sirius rather hopes so, as much as he hopes for anything now.

He is beginning to guess what the worst thing about Azkaban will be, and he thinks it is the endlessness. That it will forever be an eternal hopelessness of days spent trying not to think, and nights spent in nightmares and sleeplessness, on and on until only death seems welcome and any possibility of an afterlife is quite as distasteful as that of living.

But Sirius has not come to that yet. He knows that the other prisoners in their more lucid moments watch him with a sort of awe, because although he knows he screams, sometimes he wakes up with his throat raw and he is crying and cannot remember quite why, for the rest of the time he acts almost _normal_. 

The first few months were the worst. He did scream then, not in anguish but in fury, because he has had _no trial_, the entire damn world is against him, Peter is a traitor of the very worst sort and they're dead, _they're dead_. And so he had yelled, even at the dementors he had yelled, let him out, let him go, oh, just let him commit the murder he was imprisoned for and have done with it!

That fire, injustice and anger and revenge, they still burn inside him but he has been here almost a year now, and Sirius knows that it is very likely he will stay here forever, and he will never know where Peter is.

He has not quite gathered enough courage to really search himself, see what is inside his own mind. Sirius knows enough about the dementors to recall tales of what the fiends take, all warmth and happiness and good things that have happened in a lifetime. And Sirius knows that this must be true, because the only thing still sharp in his mind, the only memory of true clarity, is the moment his motorcycle touched down on the pavement of a country lane in Godric's Hollow, and saw their house blown in under the sick green light of the Dark Mark, and for a terrible moment he did not even want to go look for their bodies, did not want to face the damage he had done. He can turn this moment over and over in his mind, as clear as though it is still only the day after, and every other thought lurks somewhere behind this one, lurid in his mind. But if he looks, he can see his childhood, too, every single grievance clear. So he does not look, he does not want to remember the House of Black. Sirius does not search himself, because he knows there are other things too, there must still be memories of Hogwarts somewhere inside him, and if he does not bring them out, like old embroidered robes, if he does not take them out and admire them then the dementors cannot take them, all un-prodded memories will still belong to him.

All the same, as carefully as Sirius guards his thoughts, all childhood memories of James and Lily and Peter, he feels as though something is already missing. He does his best not to ponder it, not to puzzle over who or what it might be, because he knows that if he realizes, the emptiness will only grow until he does have to scream, will be just as hoarse and mad and terrified as everyone else in this cold, godforsaken fortress.

Sirius decides, very firmly, that all he misses is getting the morning paper and doing the crossword.

* * *

Remus Lupin is twenty-three years old.

He is staring out the window at a tree, and autumn leaves skittering across the sidewalk, and is not paying very much attention at all.

He receives a sharp elbow in his ribs, and jumps. The girl sitting next to him, with fashionably frizzed blonde hair and too much eye makeup – Littleton, he thinks that's her name – gives him an uncomfortably coyly disapproving look and tilts her head towards the professor, who is still working his way through a lecture of _Fellowship of the Ring_, book two.

Remus gives Littleton a polite nod, turning his face away from the window and back towards the front of the lecture hall. He wonders, not for the first time, what on earth possessed him to take this course. He does not bother to wonder why he is at Oxford at all, for that much is obvious: a registered werewolf, all of whose close friends are dead, does not face much of a future in the wizarding world; a rather attractive young man, new in town, with an excellent secondary school education, however, has quite a lot of potential to do something with himself in the Muggle world. He only wishes he had not signed up for this particular course.

He had supposed that taking a Muggle class on fantasy literature would be a welcome breath of fresh air, but he had forgotten exactly what _The Lord of the Rings_ meant to him, after having set it aside for so many years. He had forgotten how Eowyn had always reminded him of his mother; he had forgotten a conversation he had once, in laughing confidence, had admitted to having pretended to be Frodo as a child, but that he had no Sam, and a strange, secret look had crossed Sirius's face. He had forgotten that his own copy of _Lord of the Rings_ is lying in a pile of books somewhere in his father's house in Scotland, and that it smells of pastry shops and dust and too many memories; this new copy he has acquired in Oxford smells crisply of paper and ink and glue and means nothing.

Remus cannot concentrate, and his gaze drifts back to the tree outside the window. The dancing autumn leaves continue skittering along the concrete sidewalk, and he can almost fancy them chittering the words _so fair, so cold_, until he cannot quite tell if they are speaking of Eowyn or of Miriam Lupin or of himself. Remus Lupin's world is stilled, and around him life continues on its uncaring journey.

After class, as Remus exits the lecture hall, book bag slung over his shoulder stuffed with neatly-written notes, and walks on a straight gray concrete path across the university's green grounds, he can hear footsteps behind him. They slow as they near him, and he looks left and a little down into the smiling made-up face of Littleton.

"Hi," she says breathlessly.

He smiles back noncommittally. "Hello."

One finger plays with her blonde hair, twisting and untwisting one curled lock. "So," she says. "Have a lot of homework?"

"Term paper," he says absently, and listens to the sound of fallen leaves as he and Littleton crunch through them along the path.

"That's too bad," she says, smiling, friendly, a face from another life and another world. "That means your weekend won't be free, huh?"

Remus realizes with a sudden shock that this girl appears to be interested in him. He is swamped in momentary confusion, has no idea how to respond to this; in Hogwarts, he never had to deal with girls beyond the ones in his classes, friendly acquaintances and fellow study mates. Girls were people over whom James would declaim bad poetry; Peter would bemoan over their lack of interest in him. Girls were people who watched Sirius with hungry eyes, while he, oblivious, would smile only at Remus.

"I'm sorry," Remus finds himself saying. "I don't suppose I'll ever have a free weekend, really; I've already …"

"Oh, already got someone," Littleton says, supplying easily the words Remus cannot quite say. She shrugs, her smile only a little sad. "Well, I guess that's all right then … See you in class tomorrow."

"Yes," Remus says, and takes the left fork in the path as she takes the right.

The leaves still whisper around him, chanting phrases of beauty and loss that Remus has known by heart since childhood. A polite smile lingers on his face, half-lost and knowing not where to flee. Remus wonders, wonders what he has said. He has no friends here, only people at whom he smiles in passing, friendly and distant, one and the same. Littleton had been offering her acquaintance, and he has turned her down, because he has _already got someone_, a good deal of someones, and they are none of them here.

Not for the first time, and not for the last, Remus runs possibilities through his mind. None are happy; a great deal contain the phrase _what if_, which Remus knows is too dangerous. In these possibilities, again and again, as Remus crunches thoughtfully through Oxford's autumn leaves, Sirius's face returns. Remus cannot forget, and perhaps he does not want to.

Overhead the moon is waxing. Remus rakes a hand through his hair, adds purpose to his steps. He has a term paper to write.

* * *

Sirius Black is twenty-four years old.

He watches shovels scraping against the frozen earth, and wonders why they bother to do it. This ritual of burying every prisoner who goes mad or ill and dies within these walls, the dementors bury every corpse, and Sirius cannot think why. Perhaps the dementors want to keep their prisoners here forever, with them, entrapped at Azkaban. He does not know, and he is too weary to guess.

The particular prisoner they are burying now is a young man, very young indeed; he cannot be more than nineteen at Sirius's guess, with a pale face and strawberry hair. Sirius can remember this man well, for he has not been a prisoner long, fell sick soon after arriving, on that first night screamed for his mother until dawn.

Sirius is at least glad of that, that one little thing: he did not scream for his mother. He would not have wanted her to come.

"What was his name?" Sirius says aloud. His voice is hoarse, rough with disuse and stale screams. He turns away from the cold narrow slice of window, and looks slantwise across his cell, through the bars of the door and a little way down the cold corridor. The dead young man, in life, came to Azkaban with two others, and Sirius can see one of them now.

His cousin leans against her own door, hair falling dirty in her eyes. She smiles, a tight grimace less beautiful than once it was and filled now with none of the smug malice it once held. "Barty Crouch," she says.

Sirius nods, and the irony does not escape him. "I suppose it was his father who brought him here, same as he did with you?"

"And you," Bellatrix adds, still smiling.

"And me," he echoes. He is empty, looking at her. Once the thought of Bellatrix in Azkaban would have made him laugh, thrilled and half-desperate, for she is everything he is not and not mad like his mother. Now he does not care, that Bellatrix is here, though a slow cold dread is whispering through him in a chill far older than that of the dementors. He can remember fire, burns on his hand before he knew how to hold a wand properly, and his cousin laughing, and Sirius is still afraid of her. He does not ask if his aunt and uncle are still alive, or his other cousins, or his parents, though he knows Bellatrix would tell him.

"How many, do you suppose," Bellatrix says conversationally, "are here for no reason but Crouch?"

Sirius is half amazed, that she can keep the thread of this conversation, and the brittle smile on her face. Perhaps his cousin is madder than he supposed, that she remains exactly as she always was but far less beautiful. He does not remember what she has just asked him.

This does not matter, for Bellatrix continues, "No reason but Crouch, I think, Sirius. Pettigrew is a genius."

Yes, yes, Bellatrix is the same as ever she was, for something in Sirius crumbles and the dementor outside turns its black hood towards his door. He goes back over to the window, and watches the dementors outside finish piling dirt on the hapless body of the younger Crouch. He does not think Peter is a genius, because Sirius has seen how every event tumbled out – seen and reseen, far too many times – and it is not Peter's supposed genius but his own obvious stupidity, and Bellatrix knows this. He clutches weakly at the frozen stone windowsill, and his own white knuckles make no sense.

He doesn't even hate her anymore.

* * *

Remus Lupin is twenty-five years old.

"David," he says, "is this legal?"

David leans across the counter and takes the book from him, examining it closely. "Why shouldn't it be?" David is younger than Remus, Muggle-born and only a few years out of Hogwarts. He turns the leather tome over in eager hands, flicking it open and examining a crackling page closely.

Remus stares out the dusty front window of the shop, where he can see Diagon Alley's apothecary across the street, and he shrugs. "I was only wondering," he says, "because they're so old. And the subject matter is a bit dodgy."

At this, David laughs. "Dodgy indeed!" He gets up, stands silhouetted against golden dust motes that drift past him, and behind him across the window is the uninspiring name of their little shop, _Used and Unusual Books_. It was David's idea, and Remus had never bothered to come up with a more creative title. David now riffles through the book, and raises his eyebrows at the table of contents. "You may have a point. Stuff of this sort is probably quite the rage in Knockturn Alley."

"That's the volume on vampires, isn't it?" Remus asks.

"Yes. Second volume in a fifteen volume set, no less!" David's life, it seems, is filled with punctuation, exclamation marks the specialty. Remus supposes his own life is in quiet, careful italics, where it cannot be disturbed by David's enthusiasm.

"They came in this morning," Remus tells him. "By owl, but I never got to read the attached letter. You stole it before I had a chance to look."

David gives him a surprised glance, and grins. It seems he is startled time and again when Remus jokes; perhaps because all of Remus' jokes are wry and delivered in the same level tone that he carries on all conversations, or perhaps because David knows some of what Remus is about and has guessed a good deal of the rest, and so is surprised whenever his companion finds something humorous.

"Yeah, sorry about that," David says. "It's from a bloke with very impressive handwriting, at the least. And a pessimistic attitude. Says he'll be dying any day now, and he wants this set away from his remaining family members, just in case they forge his will and say the books belong to them. Don't know why he wants them sold, unless he's afraid his family's going to use them for some nefarious purpose." David chuckles.

"And the name of this pessimistic bloke with very impressive handwriting?" Remus asks patiently.

"Hang on, it was something silly and difficult – old family, mark you." David digs around in the pocket of his coat; it is a quirk of his to wear outdated Muggle clothing, even in Diagon Alley, for with his own brand of logic he says he is honoring his heritage, and as You-Know-Who is gone, he has nothing to worry about anyway. There is something in David's slightly skewed logic that makes Remus smile, because he remembers other logic without direction, and the making of insane complicated spells, and when he thinks back, after four years, sometimes the whole wild Animagus scheme makes him smile again.

"Got it!" David says triumphantly, and brandishes a parchment letter. "Here we are – Alphard Black. That's it."

Remus's hands involuntarily clench into fists. Through the years, he can hear Sirius telling him excitedly, _I've got us all set up for a flat – it's all arranged – doesn't matter my bloody family disinherited me, my Uncle Alphard still likes me – sent me quite a bit of money_…

"I see," Remus says, and does.

David frowns slightly. "Wouldn't be related to –"

"His uncle," Remus says, and laughs bitterly. "It's all right; we'll be able to sell these for a fair price."

"Hang on," David says, his eyes skimming back over the letter. "We'll have to dock the price a bit – there's a page missing from volume three. Torn out, it says."

Remus glances at the remaining fourteen volumes sitting neatly in stacks on the counter. _Volume One: Banshees_. _Volume Two: Vampires_ is still under David's arm. _Volume Three: Werewolves_. Remus lets out a little breath. "Does it say the contents of the page?"

"It isn't much, apparently," David tells him. "Just a woodcut, so none of the actual text is missing. Only someone who's seen a collection of these before is going to be able to tell the difference. We'll have to dock one percent, if that." He folds the letter, and stuffs it back into his pocket. "Pity, though; I can never get over wizarding illustrations, even after all this time. Apparently the missing woodcut is of Grindelwald and a female werewolf."

Remus only nods.

David sets the volume on vampires back on the counter, and comes over to Remus. There is a look on his face that Remus has begun to recognize, both from Oxford and afterwards; it is an expression that says whoever is looking at him has become tangled in what they imagine Remus's life is, and they want to find the nameless sorrow they think they see in him, and rid him of it forever. Remus has never quite understood this. But David is gazing at him with that look on his face, green eyes solemn and dark hair falling into them in a way far too comfortably familiar. He reaches out a hand, a hesitating tremble over the slope of Remus's shoulder.

"No, David," Remus says quietly.

David's hand drops to his side, and he laughs offhandedly. Remus knows that David thinks he understands; they have been running this bookshop together long enough that David can count the absences easily, and put together one thing and another for the obvious conclusion, so when Remus says no, David can blame the moon.

It's always easier that way, Remus supposes, and begins repairing a book's binding. It is always, always easiest to blame the moon.

* * *

Sirius Black is twenty-six years old.

Bellatrix has long since spent her screams, and gone to the terrifying silence that governs Azkaban. Sirius is not relieved, for at least the screams, any screams, are _something_.

_Nothing_, that is more difficult.

_Nothing_ seems to rule Sirius's existence these days. Crushing injustice and memories of a destroyed house and broken bodies still lurk in the back of his mind, but they are nothing like what they were before. With his cousin here, he has relived his childhood for the past year, but going over, and back over again, his own mother's rages, they have grown dim and almost surreal. A gray nothingness is beginning to creep up; the endless, terrifying nothingness that Sirius has suspected would set in.

He leans back against the cold stone of his cell wall, and the cold no longer even bothers him. It just _is_. There is no before, and no after, just the cold and the stone, so Sirius supposes that perhaps now, if he has forgotten everything but Azkaban, he must finally be going mad.

He still wants to do the bloody crossword, and it isn't a silly excuse anymore, to distract him from the knowledge that he has forgotten so many important things. He wants to do the crossword because it is a change from monotony.

Sirius gets up. He goes to the narrow window, but the cold ground outside is the same as ever, and the choppy sea is the same as ever, and even if the sky is blue today instead of steel, it is still only the same patch of sky. Sirius paces across his cell, counting his steps, and stops when he reaches a thousand. Sirius counts each of the stones laid in the floor, but loses track halfway and doesn't care enough to start again. Sirius sits down again and examines the threads of his tattered robes. He even welcomes the familiar onslaught of terrible memory that accompanies his last free hours in these same robes, because at least the memory is of something not _here_.

There is a worn chip of stone on the ground. Sirius picks it up idly and tosses it back and forth between his hands; a comforting motion, until one of the dementors outside his cell turns and takes a deep, rattling breath, and then the motion loses all comfort and Sirius feels empty, tossing the chip of stone between his hands. 

Still holding the stone, he gets to his knees, and stares at the hoards of tally marks that will tell him, if he wished to count, that he has been in Azkaban for five years. Shakily, he scratches with the chip of stone, adds a horizontal line across four equally shaky vertical ones. Then, to pass the time, he begins meticulously writing names with the little piece of stone.

The first name he writes is _Rigmora_. That is easy; that is his mother, and if she is dead, she is still as present as ever she was. The second name he writes is _Arcturus_. That is equally easy; that is his father, a handsome man from whom Sirius inherited far too much and not enough at all, who loved his mother like nothing else in the world, and turned a blind eye that all she and her bloody ancient noble house inflicted. The third name he writes is _Regulus_, and he tries not to think of his brother, who was innocent and honestly liked him once, but liked his mother more and wished to please her so much that he died for her.

Sirius spends the rest of that day writing his family. He finds he can remember them all, from careful drilling by his parents, reciting litanies of aunts and uncles and distant relatives so many times removed but still possessing pure blood. Sirius hates them all, and writes them all, and last of all inscribes _Andromeda_, and the Muggle _Ted_, and their enchanting baby _Nymphadora_, who must be almost nine by now.

He sleeps.

After meager breakfast and his shaking tally mark the next morning, Sirius continues. He knows it cannot go on forever, this writing of names, but it gives him no joy, and so he can do it and not bow to the nothingness. 

He writes next the names of all the children he hated at Hogwarts, starting with Severus Snape and ending quite a while later with a Voldemort-supporting Ravenclaw boy by the name of Josh Mittelmann. Having exhausted these, he writes the names of other Slytherins, and then Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, and finally, as setting sunlight slides red across the door of his cell, Sirius writes Gryffindors, fellow classmates and those on the house Quidditch team. 

As the last bit of sun vanishes, he inscribes _Peter Pettigrew_. As twilight fills his cell, he scratches in _Lily Evans_, and because he thinks it fitting, he adds below it, _+ James Potter_, and encircles them with a badly drawn heart.

Sirius stops, and thinks very hard, and can feel dangerous tears pricking against the backs of his eyes.

As the first stars come out, shining faint and cold through the narrow window, Sirius writes with the utmost care, _Remus J. Lupin_.

The dementors crowd around his cell then, and Sirius curls in upon himself, trying to capture something he lost years before, trying to keep rapidly disappearing warmth snug in his middle where it properly belongs. And Remus flees him, flees him, wry hazel eyes and the slip of a faint smile vanished in an instant, and Sirius only manages to trap one thought, where it lies shivering in his mind like a butterfly.

_Moony_.

The dementors glide away from his cell, losing interest. They cannot see, but they have sensed rising despair and a sudden drop into less complex, muddled thoughts. This prisoner has gone mad at last, and he is of no more use but that of passing interest and moments of panic.

In his cell, Sirius puts his paws over his muzzle, and sleeps warm for the first time in years, in his thick black fur.

* * *

Remus Lupin is twenty-seven years old.

"You're joking," he says flatly.

Augustus lays a hand across his son's, and the hand is colder than Remus ever wishes it to be. "That," Augustus says, "would be an altogether cruel joke."

Remus shuts his eyes, and leans back in the armchair. "I don't understand," he says finally. "You're a wizard. You're not even seventy yet, and Professor Dumbledore must be far over a hundred." He opens his eyes, looks at his father again, and tries to keep his voice free of accusation. "There was no cure for Mum, but I know you don't have cancer."

Augustus does not look at Remus. His eyes drift across the room, resting on one pile of books and then another, and then on to gaze out the sitting room window at the little garden. He says, almost absently, "I know you've missed these books, all those years since you've lived here. The house and everything in it will belong to you."

"To hell with the house," Remus says, and surprises even himself with the absolute calmness of his voice. "I want to know why you think you're dying."

"It's …" Augustus frowns. "What was the medical term? Failure to thrive, I believe. I've lived as much as I want, Remus, and it's enough."

Remus remembers, suddenly, the way they both had been after his mother died. They had both wanted nothing more than to have her back, but had both smiled, and even managed to laugh, because they had each other, and that had to be enough. Remus remembers thinking that Augustus had to be the bravest man there was, to carry on so. That is why this, now, does not make sense.

"Why?" he says.

"You're all right now," Augustus explains. "You have a life, and you're living it. For a year or two there … I wondered. But you've gone on, and I don't need to, you see." Remus wants to protest, but his father holds up a hand. "I think it's perhaps the best way to die," he adds. "Simply deciding it's time."

Remus wonders if he'll ever just _decide_, and the very worst part is that he very much suspects he might. His father and he are not so different, after all.

"If you must," Remus says finally.

"Very good." Augustus smiles, and stands up. "However, I won't be going quite yet. I propose we go to the seaside for a few days, and enjoy ourselves. I don't suppose you've taken the time to enjoy yourself recently?" He shoots Remus a shrewd look, and Remus shrugs, not quite willing to smile. 

It will not be so terrible, he decides. This house will be his; he will probably stop living in a London flat with David, and will instead simply Floo to Diagon Alley from here in Scotland. He will keep the books company, or perhaps it is they who will keep his company, and on the full moon he will shut himself away in the cellar as his parents used to do when he was a child. It will not be so bad.

It is only that he has a silent promise to everyone who has gone away, that on the full moon he will howl, singing their memories. It is only that he is beginning to lose track, and this frightens him. He will sing his mother, as always, and he will sing Lily and James, as he always does now. In a few months' time, he will also sing his father. And he tries always to remember to sing for Peter, but sometimes he becomes confused, and sings for himself and Sirius instead.

It is only that he is beginning to lose track.

But it will not be so bad, Remus decides, and leaves it at that. 

* * *

Sirius Black is twenty-eight years old.

He is in a strange dream world, and he does not like it much better than he likes Azkaban. From where he is, he can _see_ Azkaban. It is a toy fortress, below him on a cold little rock, while strange winds and a savage sea tear away at it. Everything is steel and gray, except that he is sitting on a cloud bathed in sunlight, and it is cold. It is always cold, of course, in the upper air, though he tries not to fly his motorbike into clouds.

"Is this Heaven?" he asks James offhandedly. 

James only laughs.

No, Sirius decides, obviously a cloud above Azkaban is not anyone's paradise. One of the lenses of James's glasses is gone, and the other is dirty and cracked. James looks almost waxy, pale against the soot on his face, and his hair is as messy as ever. He looks almost exactly as he did the night Sirius found him, dead under the Dark Mark at his ruined house. Almost exactly, though James is not glowing sickly green now, but is pale, pale.

"Where are we, then?" Sirius asks.

James shrugs. "Your mind, I think," he says finally, and his voice sounds odd, distant and hoarse with a far more final disuse than that which afflicts Sirius's.

"That," says Sirius, pointing down through the clouds at the toy prison, "is not in my mind. _That_ is real."

His best friend laughs again, and it is not a pleasant sound. "And it's here, too," he points out. "You can't even escape it here. That's pathetic, Padfoot."

"Look," Sirius says angrily, and starts sinking through the cloud. "Look. I haven't seen you in _forever_, and you're here to tell me I'm being _pathetic_? No, no, _that's_ pathetic. Look at me, James!"

James does, like a skull, and Sirius falls through the cloud.

He falls into the ocean, which actually is a Scottish loch, and Azkaban is up on the moor above him. Sirius gasps from the cold and treads water frantically.

"Need a hand?" someone asks.

Sirius turns, water in his eyes, and Peter smiles at him.

"You –!" Sirius says, and breathes in water, and Peter giggles while he drowns.

Under the water, everything is slow and murky-green and so very cold. Kelp trails, drifting tattered through the water like Lily's hair or a dementor's cloak. Sirius sinks downward, because drowning is not much different from Azkaban, and at the bottom of the loch Remus sits in a silver cage, singing a lullaby his mother used to sing him, singing a silly little song he had once sung Sirius to humor him.

Sirius tries to say his name, but all that comes out are bubbles.

Remus looks up from inside his silver cage, hair drifting through the water, and he smiles in recognition, the sort of smile he always reserved for people he disliked. The water becomes even colder, and Remus says quite clearly, "Tell me you didn't do it."

Sirius tries, but still there are only empty bubbles, and he cannot think with the cold, and Remus _right there_.

One fingernail scrapes along a silver bar of Remus's cage, and Remus only keeps smiling that too-polite smile, as blood drifts away from his finger and the fingernail-screech shoots through the water like something alive. Remus only smiles, and says, "It must have been you then. You killed them. Pity." He examines his finger, though it doesn't stop bleeding, and says conversationally, "I hate you."

Sirius tries to explain, and wakes screaming.

He does not scream often in his sleep now, but when he does his throat is raw for days after, and he cries because he cannot even remember why.

* * *

Remus Lupin is twenty-nine years old.

"You can't be serious," David says, and does not know that Remus mentally, automatically, has arranged the last word of his protest into an old familiar name. "You can't possibly be serious," David says again, and snatches up Remus's little suitcase.

"That's mine," Remus points out calmly.

David clutches at the old thing, across the stamped letters proclaiming _Professor R. J. Lupin_, as though he can hold those words all for himself. The old suitcase is a leaving-Hogwarts gag gift, presented with great pomp and many laughing accusations by James, Peter, and Sirius. Remus had kept it, as he has kept almost everything those three ever gave him, not because of nostalgia, but because for far too many years, they defined who Remus Lupin was, and he does not want to forget that.

"David," Remus says, "please give me my suitcase."

David sits down in one of the dusty armchairs scattered through their shop. He is still holding the suitcase, but in a hopeless way, as though he has forgotten how to set it aside. "I don't understand," he says finally. "I know we're not doing a great business, but we're well enough off. Why do you have to leave?"

Remus shrugs. "This worked for a while, but I can hardly imagine doing this for the rest of my life. I haven't been to the Continent in years. I need a change."

"Isn't this a little early for a midlife crisis?" David says, but his heart is not in the joke, and they both know it. He sighs, and slides Remus's suitcase onto the counter, where it sits dusty between them. "I just …" He rubs his forehead. "God, Remus. Tell me you can keep employment for more than a few months, and I'll let you go easy. This has been nearly four years – _four years_, we've run this place, and if you take a few days off every month, it's your own affair. I don't care, but the rest of the world _will_."

Remus wants to say, _do you think I don't know this_? Remus wants to say, _but that is all you've done. You see me gone three days a month, and you say nothing, and that is all you've done_. He knows this is unfair, far too unfair to ever say aloud, because it is true, David has stuck by him. David is really better than the others, because David is never arrogant like James, or an eager follower like Peter, or … or like Sirius at all.

And that's the problem.

_I'm sorry I'm completely mad_, Remus wants to say, but all he says aloud is, "I know. But I need a change. Perhaps I'll come back."

They both know he won't, and David smiles tightly.

"So," he says, "where do you plan to go? The Continent's a big place."

Remus shrugs. "I was thinking France. It's only just across the Channel, and I can speak a bit of French. If not, I can always go to Germany – my father and I used to go camping in the Black Forest every summer holiday."

"And for employment?" David asks. His questions are already becoming brisk, businesslike, as though he is a mildly concerned aunt or a polite acquaintance. Remus' insides twist, and he decides this is best.

"Creature research," he says simply.

David nods, and stands. He goes to Remus, and smiles again, the odd, tight smile, and then he looks very seriously at Remus, and leans forward, slight tilt to his head and the smile oddly hesitant now, expectant.

Remus only gives David a swift hug. "Take care of yourself."

"Yeah," David says, and whatever moment he has imagined, it is past. "You take care of yourself as well. Goodbye, Remus."

"Goodbye," Remus says, and picks up his worn-out suitcase, and leaves, and looks back not once.

* * *

Sirius Black is thirty years old.

He is lying on the floor, and his eyes blink open. He stares at the damp stone that he knows better than anything in the world, and it looks exactly the same sideways as it does when he is sitting up. Sirius wonders vaguely what it is that has made him awaken, and then he hears it again.

Footsteps.

He sits up, a clumsy scrambling movement. These are not stumbling prisoner-footsteps in their hopeless worn-out shoes; these are official shoes, walking across the dank stone of Azkaban on some official business.

Sirius goes to the door of his cell, and peers through the bars, heedless now of the dementor that stands guard to it.

Walking down the corridor, with a hunch in his shoulders that belies the official sound of his step, is a Ministry official with red hair who is looking more suspiciously familiar by the moment.

"_Arthur_?"

Arthur Weasley jumps, and stares at Sirius. Perhaps he was startled by the hoarseness of Sirius's voice, or perhaps he simply was not expecting to hear the sound of his own name, but the reaction is so comic that Sirius feels a strange, momentary twinge of amusement. It dies quickly, but it is _his_, and since it is because of Arthur, Arthur Weasley who Sirius knows from the Order of the Phoenix a lifetime ago, Sirius decides to be friendly.

"Hello," he says.

Weasley continues staring.

Sirius feels the beginnings of impatience, remarkable and wholly strange. Any emotion, now, is something remarkable, and the dementors cannot take this one, because it is not _good_. He is impatient; he wants Arthur to say something, recognize him. Anything. Sirius adds, "I don't suppose I look so different you can't tell it's me. Sirius Black, you know."

"Oh!" Arthur says. "Goodness me." He blinks behind his glasses, looking lost and far younger than the tale his receding hairline can tell. It is still as brightly red as ever it was, though, Weasley red and far different from Lily's. Molly, though, Arthur's rather overbearing young wife, she had Weasley hair. So did their children …

"How's Bill?" Sirius asks. "Getting along well?" He remembers now, the firey little boy he met once after an Order meeting. Bill Weasley had been, according to the child himself, seven and a half. He had looked very proud of the fact, and Sirius had taken an immediate liking to him. The boy had a childish devil-may-care look, and his hair had been ridiculously long, far longer than Sirius's, who at nineteen could pull it back in a short ponytail if he so wished. Sirius had asked Bill why the child's hair was so long, to which Bill had replied that he liked it this way, and he hated when his mother cut it, because she always did a bad job. Sirius had laughed.

Sirius still cares about a little boy he hasn't seen since goodness-knows-when.

"Yes," says Arthur, looking bewildered. "Yes, all well. We've had quite a few more. Charley – I'm sure you must have met him – and Percy – he was very young, I don't know if you ever saw him – Fred and George – they're twins – Ron, and little Ginny. Er." He flounders.

"A lot," Sirius says, because counting is too much of a difficulty.

"Yes," Arthur says again, rather helplessly.

It suddenly occurs to Sirius how awful Arthur looks. He is shaking, and pouring sweat in the cold, and his skin is grayish. Sirius cannot imagine how he himself looks, but the shaking of his own hands is part of his very being, and he feels as though he has long since been bleached of all color. He realizes, stunned, that _he_ is the one carrying on this conversation. _He_ seems the sane one.

"I say," Sirius says, "you wouldn't happen to have the _Prophet_ with you? I miss doing the crossword."

Arthur mumbles an apology, and flees.

The dementor by Sirius's door breathes in, deep and rattling. The sound goes inside Sirius's bones, as always it does, and he shrinks away from it, to the floor. Something has happened, he thinks, and stares at the damp stone that he knows better than anything in the world, the stone that looks exactly the same sideways as it does when he is sitting up. Something has happened, and though he does not know what, somehow he vaguely thinks it may have been comforting. And that is enough.

* * *

Remus Lupin is thirty-one years old.

He is getting rid of a boggart.

It will be very easy to do. He has gone more places, in the last two years, than he has gone in his entire life. A part of Remus wants to laugh, laugh madly, because he had spent far too long looking after his _Used and Unusual Books_ with David, and has now, in half the time he spent there, learned four times as much. There are creatures everywhere he goes, wizarding pests mostly, and so for a small sum he will de-pest the wizards, and afterwards, in a small, neat notebook, he will write down what he has found. He is regretting, now, not having taken Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts in favor of more obviously academic subjects, because every magical creature he comes across is fascinating. Remus is teaching himself now, drifting through the world, and he is enjoying himself more than he has in years.

Just now, though, he is not looking forward to really _enjoying_ himself. He is in Germany again, and he is getting rid of a boggart, and it will be easy.

The house Remus is in belongs to a friendly old witch. Remus's German still isn't very good, but the old witch can speak some English, which isn't really very good English either, and so they talk brokenly in each other's languages, laughing good-naturedly, and it is established that there is a boggart in a dresser in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and that Remus will remove it for only a small amount. 

Remus stands in the tidy little bedroom, and considers an imposing oak dresser. The boggart is inside it. He will say an opening spell, and the moon will rise out, and he will say the banishing spell, and the boggart will drift apart like smoke. That is all.

It was harder the first time, Remus remembers.

The first boggart he ever faced had been during a Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson in his third year. He remembers feeling frozen, the first time, when he saw the moon drifting lazily above them all in the classroom. He felt shivery, and his limbs grew heavy, not from fear but from something stranger, a mix of panic and awe. But Remus was always a good student, and so it wasn't too hard to simply say _Riddikulus_ at his oldest enemy, and have the moon fall as a round of cheese. It had been easy, looking back on it, even directly afterwards when the other children had gone into gales of laughter and the next student had jumped forward to take on the boggart. Even then it had seemed easier, but at the time it had been difficult, one of the bravest things Remus had ever done. Perhaps every time it is like that, but Remus is very good at not noticing.

Sometimes he wishes his boggart would be a bit more concrete, though. Something nearer and more tangible than a twisted representation of the worst aspect of himself. Remus does not remember many of the other shapes the boggart took, in that class back at Hogwarts, but he does remember Sirius's.

He remembers far too much about Sirius, but he never tries to make himself forget.

Sirius's boggart had been his own mother, Remus remembers. She had been wild-eyed and proud, and perhaps not everyone in the class had recognized her, but there was something in her face and bearing that had let Remus know beyond a shadow of doubt who she was. When Sirius had banished her boggart self, there had been a look of greatest satisfaction on his face, as though because he had done this, he could rid himself of the actual woman with the same careless wand wave.

Remus envies that. If he could make himself believe that about the moon, if only for a moment, then things would perhaps be the slightest bit better. Or if he could set aside this fear of himself – the moon, the wolf, himself, all one, Remus knows, and knows it is a silly fear, to fear one's own self, but he does it anyway – if he could set aside this fear for only a moment, and perhaps face lesser ones.

Loneliness, however, does not take a shape.

Remus stares thoughtfully at the dresser, and wonders what he would do if the boggart came out Sirius-shaped. It has been ten years now, and Remus has somehow never attached himself to anyone for long, because it seems Sirius is always _there_, just at the edges of his mind, and so Remus rather wants to see Sirius again. Of course, Remus knows perfectly well that even if through some strange twist in the fabric of his life, the boggart _did_ look like Sirius, it wouldn't be good enough by half. It won't be especially productive to backhand the boggart as hard as he can, and Remus doubts that a boggart or indeed the real Sirius will ever be able to answer the question, "_why_?" 

He supposes, barring these two courses of action, there is always the third, should the boggart look like Sirius. But Remus does not know of any recorded instances of a boggart actually touching someone, and what it would do to either human or boggart. Besides, a boggart probably wouldn't take well to being kissed angrily full on the mouth. Might upset the poor thing.

Remus laughs to himself, and shakes away the tatters of that strange daydream. "_Alohomora_," he tells the dresser, and the moon drifts up from the depths of its drawers. Remus stares up for a moment at his whitely shining demon, and feels strangely relieved. It is impossible to kiss the moon.

"_Riddikulus_," he says, and leaves the bedroom as the boggart pulls apart with a bang and drifts off into nothingness.

* * *

Remus Lupin is thirty-two years old.

He is brewing some tea for himself and Albus Dumbledore, in the bright little kitchen of the house on the moor, and he is feeling a strange mixture of detachment from the place and a great relief to be back at where at least a part of his mind thinks is _home_.

"I'm rather surprised you dropped by," Remus admits, handing Dumbledore a teacup and sitting down across from him at the little round table.

"I'm rather surprised to find you here," Dumbledore rejoins, with a smile to soften his words. "I haven't heard from you in a few years. What have you been doing?"

"A good number of things," Remus replies, and both sip their tea at the same time. Remus grimaces and adds a bit of sugar to his. He then offers the sugar bowl to Dumbledore, who takes it with a nod of thanks, and Remus elaborates, "A few years ago I thought it might be enjoyable to tour Europe. I've been keeping odd jobs along the way, and doing some creature research. I always meant to get as far as Asia, for a change of scene, but …" He trails off. The unspoken ending is obvious enough; his robes are carefully patched and repatched, the paint in this house is faded but not peeling, the teacups are clean but chipped. Remus is living now in the tidiest possible poverty, but he blames no one, and he is content.

Dumbledore nods, though whether he fully understands Remus's mind or not, he does not say. Instead he asks, "I don't suppose you've heard much about Harry, lately?"

Remus looks up a little bit too quickly, but catches himself, and only nods. "I've heard bits and pieces, but nothing really substantial. Hagrid owled me a few months ago, asking for pictures of Lily and James … He said he wanted to make an album for Harry." Remus smiles regretfully. "I could only send in a few … Wedding pictures, mostly, and a few afterwards from Godric's Hollow. The rest …" Remus can feel the smile hovering at the corner of his mouth, and it scares him. It is good, he supposes, that he can talk about them all, and smile. Resolutely he finishes, "The rest of the pictures didn't seem terribly appropriate. Most of them had Sirius."

How long has it been since he said that name aloud? Remus does not know.

The old headmaster seems not to have noticed. He only nods again, thoughtfully, and remarks, "Harry is doing quite well this year. He's already shown himself to have some of James in him … I don't suppose Hagrid told you this. At the end of last term, Harry protected the Philosopher's Stone from being stolen and used by Voldemort."

Remus's hand tightens on his teacup. That is all.

"We shan't have to worry about Voldemort for a while yet, I should think," Dumbledore murmurs. He takes a sip of tea and brightens, the twinkle returning to his eyes. "I don't suppose you've heard the alleged jinx on the Defense Against the Dark Arts job?"

A little startled at the subject change, Remus blinks. "No," he admits, "I can't say I have." He does remember the Defense professor he learned under, a woman called Leverett, who believed the Ministry was infallible. She had disliked Remus on the principle that he was one of the creatures she was teaching the children to be protected against. Remus had always treated her with measured courtesy, and had pitied her more than he disliked her. At any rate, it had been one of the classes he was most proficient in, and he had received good marks. By his seventh year, when Voldemort was fully in power, Leverett had been teaching on Ministry propaganda alone, and Remus had taken it upon himself to prepare a number of fifth years for their Defense O.W.L.s. Dislike for Leverett ran high, and for whatever reason, the following year she had left, going on to quietly and avidly supported Bartemius Crouch on his fierce crusade to rid the wizarding world of Voldemort by whatever means necessary. Still, no matter under what circumstances she had left, Remus has not heard of any jinx on the subject.

"Indeed," says Dumbledore, the twinkle still in his eyes. "After Professor Leverett resigned, Hogwarts has gone through a rather alarming number of Defense professors, none of them staying on for longer than a year. You can imagine how rumors of a jinx may spread."

Remus nods. "Who have you got this year, then?"

Dumbledore clears his throat, and manages to look slightly sheepish and very mischievous all at once. "One Gilderoy Lockhart," he says.

Remus chokes on his tea, which conveniently lets him cough until he can compose himself. It will not do to laugh, really. "I see," he says dryly. "I hope you're not implying that the poor man shan't last the year?"

"No, no, of course not," Dumbledore says, smiling behind his beard. "Though in the event that something _does_ come up, it may be pleasant to have someone on hand with less fame and authorship, and more experience in the field."

"Good luck finding someone, then," Remus replies, and hides behind his teacup so that he will not have to endure Dumbledore's disapproving look. He understands now why Dumbledore has _really_ come, and he feels rather a fool for not guessing. Having taken a sip, he sets his cup down in its saucer, and stares into the dregs. "Listen," he says finally. "I can't imagine why you are saying this, but if it is out of charity, then please understand that my answer is no."

"Remus –"

He looks up, and smiles brightly across the table at Dumbledore. "No, please don't tell me otherwise. Regardless of your explanation, the fact remains that Severus is a member of your faculty, and I sincerely doubt he shall be as willing as he was at sixteen to conceal the fact that I am a werewolf, whether should I choose to lay aside old grudges or no."

Dumbledore frowns. "Remus, I hardly think that is protest enough."

"You have Lockhart," Remus says, and is surprised at himself, for his voice has come out gently, a concerned grandson comforting an old man. He wonders how it has come to this.

"In the event that Gilderoy –" Dumbledore starts.

For the second time that afternoon, Remus dares to interrupt him. "I appreciate the offer, and I shall think on it. Though," he adds, as he accompanies Dumbledore to the front door, "to be perfectly honest, it will take a very strange set of circumstances indeed to coerce me to return to Hogwarts."

Dumbledore shakes his hand. "Something may yet happen," he says. "It was good to see you, Remus." He Disapperates without another word.

Remus smiles, and goes back inside to wash the teacups. Dumbledore must be getting older, he thinks, or perhaps desperate. Or he is as pitying as ever, which is perhaps worse. No, the whole thing is ridiculous.

His little suitcase, with the words _Professor R. J. Lupin_ stamped across it, sits innocently in a corner of his bedroom, and waits.

* * *

Sirius Black is thirty-three years old.

He _knows_ this, without a doubt, because no two days are alike anymore. He feels drunk with it, half-mad with freedom, and he has to keep stifling his bubbling laughter. He has been Padfoot-shaped most of this time, but sometimes, dangerous though it is, he _has_ to be human, just lie still for a moment in the night and let glorious old memories wash over him. They are mostly memories of James and Remus, and they are all wonderful, because they are not fragmented nightmares, they are real, _real_. James seems more real, these days, because Sirius stopped by in the south of England, a little detour, and saw his godson for the first time in twelve years.

That alone is almost enough to make everything, _everything_, worth it.

He is in Hogwarts, now. He is near Harry, now.

It is Halloween, he thinks. The students will all be going down to the feast soon, and then he will get into Gryffindor Tower, and kill Peter. It is fitting, he thinks, that Peter will die on Halloween night. It is the twelfth anniversary of James and Lily's deaths tonight. Fitting.

Sirius realizes, ruefully, that he is avoiding the real issue on hand.

The issue being, Sirius Black is standing, human, in a darkened classroom, and courtesy of Padfoot, he can smell so vividly it is like smelling colors. This classroom is smudged with smoky glitter and chocolate, _Remus_. And the suitcase is half under the desk, _Professor R. J. Lupin_. And the chalkboard says, in Remus's neat handwriting, near the top, _Defense Against the Dark Arts_.

The issue being that Remus Lupin is here, in this castle, and that is very, very distracting.

There is a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ lying on Remus's desk. Sirius knows he shouldn't, because Remus can smell just as well as he and will know instantly that he was here, but Sirius does it all the same; picks up the paper gently, almost reverently. This is something that Remus has touched.

Sirius sees the paper's headline.

**Black Still at Large**.

He blinks, and checks the date. July 31. 

Remus still has this paper.

Sirius tries very hard not to think about this, and instead lets his eyes drift down to the headline again, and past it, onto the photo below. He stares at it for a moment, puzzling. It is supposed to be a photo of himself; he knows this, but the man in the picture –

This man does not look to be in his mid-thirties. He looks far older; not wiser, or even more worldly, but simply very world-_weary_. He is haggard with lack of food and the deepest sorrow, a sorrow that, Sirius notes in detached puzzlement, he can only recognize because it is supposed to be his own face. The sorrow is not in his eyes, _nothing_ is in his eyes. Hopelessness, that is this picture.

_Is this really what I have become_? Sirius thinks, and tries to ignore the answer.

Azkaban has been a place of frozen time, and Sirius cannot quite think it yet, that he is no longer twenty and handsome and fighting the world with all the fiery laughing defiance he possesses. Sirius Black is supposed to be living in a little Edinburgh flat with Remus, spending a bit too much time down at the pub or working on his precious motorbike, doing his best to do Dumbledore's work and fight against Voldemort, and dropping in at James and Lily's in between times. Sirius Black is not a crazed mass murderer who laughs when his world cracks, loses all his hope, and escapes the inescapable fortress of Azkaban only to have his own bloody revenge.

He does not know what he is, and in this space, this darkened classroom scented with students and ink and sugar quills and chalk and Remus and far too many memories, he pretends for a moment he is still young Sirius Black, who has never heard the rattle of a dementor, and perhaps after the Halloween feast he will help James rig one of the corridors to trip up hapless students, or he will slip away early with Remus and kiss away all laughing protests.

Sirius sighs, and lets the paper flutter back onto the desk.

It is the Halloween anniversary, and he does not have time for wistfulness or twisting fancies. There is something he must do.

* * *

Remus Lupin is thirty-four years old.

He is standing in a haunted, dusty memory the Hogsmeade villagers like to refer to as the Shrieking Shack. Ron Weasley is trembling awkwardly on a tattered old bed, and Hermione Granger is pressed tense and wary against the wall, and Harry Potter is standing, shaking, with his wand out, and there is a ginger cat glaring up at him and daring him to get any closer, but all of this is filed somewhere in Remus's mind, wholly unimportant. Sirius Black, a strange nightmare version of him, is sprawled on the dusty floorboards, too thin and sunken and tattered and waxy, and he is staring at Remus, and he is saying somewhere, almost too quietly for Remus to understand he is thinking it, _please believe me_.

Sirius is pointing to Ron, on the bed, and the rat, on the bed, Peter, _Peter_.

He mutters, half-consciously, trying to fit his mind around this strange new place and confusing ideas he finds himself now entangled in, "But then … why hasn't he shown himself before now? Unless –"

Everything tumbles and clicks into place, a door finally unlocked or a puzzle finally solved, and for the first time in far too many years, Remus suddenly understands that perhaps he is not so mad for loving Sirius Black, after all.

He says it, then, not what needs to be said, but because he needs to hear his own voice saying it, needs to tell Sirius he knows, needs to reaffirm it in his own mind. He says, "– unless _he_ was the one … unless you switched … without telling me?"

And Sirius nods now, very slowly, and his eyes do not leave Remus's, as never they did when he is telling the truth and _needs_ it believed.

That is enough.

That is more than enough.

Somewhere, far away and in another world, Remus can dimly hear Harry's voice. The boy is asking a question, sounding lost and too confused, but that does not matter right now.

He crosses the dusty old space he tore apart as a student, and touches Sirius for the first time in twelve years, seizes his hand and pulls Sirius to his feet. The ginger cat spills off Sirius with a yowl. Sirius's hand is not enough, and so Remus pulls Sirius to him, a fierce shaking hug to make up for twelve missed years of embraces.

They are both too thin, and there are too many angles and a bitter sharpness that did not exist before, and they do not have enough time, now. Sirius is frozen, not because he does not want this, for Remus has no room for doubt, now, but he is shaking too, the same trembling intensity Remus remembers too well from that final year, before everything happened, and they cannot be expected to start over, can they? It is too much to ask, but they must.

"I –" Remus whispers, because if he does not say it now, he might never say it at all, but he does not get the chance.

"I DON'T BELIEVE IT!" Hermione screams.

Remus lets go of Sirius reluctantly, and turns to face her. It is going to be a long night, fraught with difficult explanations. But he will be able to do it. He must.

* * *

Remus Lupin is thirty-five years old.

As always he does when he feels at a loss, he brews them both some tea.

"Thanks," Sirius says, and gulps it down, just as he has dispensed of the quick dinner Remus made. He sets the teacup aside, and grins faintly as Remus spoons sugar into his own tea. "Anyway," Sirius says, "the extent of Dumbledore's orders were 'lay low at Lupin's.' I'm afraid he's got some dastardly scheme in mind, and the moment he drops it on us, I'm going to want to be off to live in that cave above Hogsmeade again, but for now it's the only information I've got."

"I see," Remus says, and drinks his tea, which has a bit too much sugar this time. He smiles across the little round table at Sirius. "I suppose I'll have to put up with you, then."

Sirius laughs, a hoarse barking laugh. "You know what?" he says. "I think that's what I've missed the most."

"What?" Remus asks curiously.

"Your sense of humor," Sirius replies, and stands up too suddenly, the chair behind him thudding back on two legs. He walks to the window, and stares out at the cottage's little garden and the Scottish twilight.

This will take getting used to, Remus thinks. Sirius is more sudden now, talks shorter phrases and has to go to the window every few minutes, to make sure outside still exists. Sirius is twitchy, much the way he was during his first few years at Hogwarts, when his family, invisible back in London, still had too much control over his life. This, Remus suspects, will take far longer to heal.

He realizes he is thinking this automatically, just as he did when they were out of school, thinking automatically that he _will_ have years, will be with Sirius forever and a day, that they will get through this unscathed, will not die or be damaged.

Remus knows it is not true. He should stop thinking like this, as though they will be all right, but he cannot help it.

Sirius turns away from the window and faces him again, and Remus can see in his face that Sirius has been thinking the same thing. "I think," Sirius says finally, "that we are wasting our time."

Rather pithy, Remus thinks, and finishes his tea. "Wasting our time doing what?" Sirius has left the room, strode out of the kitchen and into the sitting room strewn with old books. Remus follows him, and repeats the question.

Slouching on a threadbare old couch, looking both younger and older than he has any right to seem, Sirius shrugs, gestures aimlessly. "We should be mobilizing the Order. Dumbledore mentioned the old crowd, I know, but … I feel bloody _useless_. We should, I don't know, get Harry. Something. Anything."

Not enough time, Remus thinks tiredly. He sits down on the couch next to Sirius. I understand, he wants to say, but he is sure that is the last thing Sirius wants to hear right now. He is not quite sure what Sirius wants to hear. Remus is quite sure what he himself wants to say, but perhaps they have both been broken too long and he does not quite know how to say it anymore. 

"Something will happen, I think, soon enough," he says.

Do you want to tell me anything? he wants to ask. Twelve years in Azkaban, and it was too sudden, and there must be _something_ you want to say.

Sirius flashes him another one of those quick, disconcerting smiles. "Moony," he says, "you're trying too hard."

"Trying too hard?" Remus repeats, nonplussed.

Sirius takes a deep breath. "When I got out of Azkaban," he says haltingly, "it was the most fantastic thing in the world. It took a while for … for, you know, everything to come back, be in perspective. I had too much time to think this past year, before I went back up to Hogsmeade. When I was down in the tropics. It was lovely warm, but I had to keep acting godfatherly. And I realized … there were all these things Harry asked, and I didn't quite know how to answer but I did anyway, because that's what Harry needs, you see? Even if it seems mad to say something, say it." He smiles again, humor quickly dashing across his face and off again. "Like I said. Just out of Azkaban, I kept remembering all these brilliant things the … the dementors had taken." He swallows. "Brilliant things. Stupid stuff James and I used to do. Stuff about you, too."

"I see," Remus says, and he does, almost. Perhaps they are very different people now than they were all those years ago, but there is still something the same, that has lingered about them. Remus always thinks too much, and does not speak it. Sirius always speaks too much, and perhaps somewhere in his ramblings he will make his point, but even he will not realize it. It is for Sirius to say it, and Remus to understand what it is he is saying.

"We don't have enough time," Remus adds, and leans forward, and gently brushes the hair away from Sirius's eyes.

"No," Sirius agrees, and leans forward too, and their mouths meet halfway.

Perhaps things will never be as they should, Remus thinks wryly, but this will certainly help to pass the time, and that's _something_, at least.

* * *

Sirius Black is thirty-six years old.

"I cannot _believe_ it!" he says angrily, for what he vaguely suspects may be the fifth time. "I can't believe it, Remus."

"Yes," Remus says patiently. "You've said."

Sirius paces up and down the room, further wearing down a very impressive but very old Persian rug. He decides he hates the rug, but he has probably decided this already, because he cannot count how many times in every day he decides he hates something about Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. He just hates the whole bloody place.

"I can't believe it," he says again. "That _woman_! The bloody Ministry! I swear, when I heard Crouch finally got what was coming to him, I thought maybe, just _maybe_, such stupid measures wouldn't be taken this time around." He finally slumps down on a bed that is probably still infested with Doxies. "I can't believe I forgot about all the people like bloody Umbridge."

"This may not be comforting," Remus says, "but I am almost entirely sure that by June, Minister Fudge will be forced to publicly announce Voldemort's return."

Sirius laughs bitterly. "That all depends on what will force him to it."

"Yes," Remus murmurs. "I know."

Sirius bites his lip. "I'm just so worried for Harry now, too. I still think it's bloody stupid, us keeping him in the dark." He pauses. He does not really want to say this, because Dumbledore has done so much for them. He does not really want to say this, because he and Remus have been somehow managing for almost a year now, and little by little they have managed to tell each other about twelve lost years, but they have not yet managed to go beyond that. They have even managed to talk about Hogwarts again, though there is a strange blurry spot where Peter used to be, and perhaps they are glorifying James a little. Whatever the reason, they have not quite managed to talk about the one time, after Dumbledore heard the prophecy and everything went mad. When Sirius stormed out, and the world fell to pieces. He does not really want to say this. 

He does anyway.

"We shouldn't keep Harry in the dark," he says again, "just because Dumbledore's got the idea he doesn't need to know. You remember what happened last time Dumbledore thought it would be safer, the less everyone knew?"

Remus shuts his eyes, and a shadow passes over his face. Indeed, Sirius thinks, they can both remember. Remus would not tell his missions, and Sirius in wild conclusion decided Remus was the spy. Sirius did not say a word about the Secret-Keeping, and the whole world then knew _he_ was the betrayer.

Because Dumbledore thought it would be _safer_ that way.

Perhaps they both know they are being unfair, because it is certainly not Dumbledore's fault entirely, but there is also truth in what Sirius is saying.

Remus sighs. "Very well," he says finally. "I think you're right. Yes."

"I don't know how we can possibly tell him, though," Sirius points out. "He's never tried to contact me in his two-way mirror. I wonder if he's ever even looked at it. I would have reminded him, when he Floo'd us, but he had to go too bloody quick."

Remus bites his lip. "I doubt even Umbridge can bar a wizard with benign intentions from entering Hogwarts. You certainly cannot go, but do you think it would be best if I went to tell Harry myself?"

"Yeah," Sirius says, feeling a rush of relief and gratitude. "That would be wonderful, Moony."

Remus smiles. "I'm afraid I'll have to take a broom. At this point I really have no idea who may be monitoring the Order's Apperating records, and it's entirely likely they'll be watching me with special closeness."

Sirius stands. "I suppose you're right. Though every minute …"

"I'm sure the news can wait a few hours," Remus assures him.

Sirius nods. "Yeah. Okay then." He is already feeling impatient; every time he reaches a decision, completes something, there must be something else to do. Far too much excess energy from Azkaban, he supposes. "While you're gone, I think I'll go look for Kreacher. Stupid bugger's been lurking for weeks. I hate to think what sort of orders he's taking from my mother's portrait these days."

Remus nods. "Good luck with that."

They both stand there for a minute more. Sirius has been feeling for months as though every day is the last, and it is difficult these days to let Remus out of his sight. It is half-foolish, this paranoia, because Remus has left the house numerous times, and has always been all right, but just in case, he takes hold of the front of Remus's robes and tells him in no uncertain terms that he must, _must_ keep safe.

When they break apart Remus laughs a little. "We'll both be fine, Padfoot," he says. "I'll see you in a few hours."

"Yeah," Sirius says, and sees Remus to the door. Afterwards, he goes upstairs to look for Kreacher, because it will pass the time, and anyway they will see each other in a few hours, and everything will be all right.


End file.
